Arise! Shine! Reveal the Mystery!

Sermon by Don Bergen
January 3, 2010

Texts: Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12; Ephesians 3:1-12

Prayer:

O God, send us your freeing inner peace to rescue us in our time of tension and need; when there are wars being fought all around us and we feel stressed for our brothers and sisters.
Send us your over-flowing, enlightening peace to save us when we would think thoughts of lonliness in the middle of crowds of bustling people.
Send us your strengthening, warming peace when we would be anxious about the economy around us--and aware of the tremendous suffering that being out of work causes.
Send us your cohesive surrounding peace when we would seek to control things without relying on your great strength and wisdom.
Help us to look within your word, within your love, and into the experiences in our own soul for a response to that love which you have for your children in these troubling times. Amen.

We have hoped for and anticipated God bursting into our reality through His incarnation in Jesus. And now the body of Christ, His church, is called to break out and live into its vocation, that of glorifying the King and Messiah of the entire universe. God works through the unexpected and is recognized and sought out by local shepherds--and then by foreign astrologers, Gentiles from far away lands. Once more the humble local and the great and manificent far away reveal God's unversal epic and cosmic reality--come to us in a time of great need. Great chaos.

Epiphany has a kingly focus and is about the manifestation of the perfect king. We are called to "rise, shine and give Him glory." The Kingdom of God, inaugurated by Jesus Christ, is revealed in the life of His church--His church that encompasses all of His nations and all of His people. This is the revealed mystery that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 3:1-12.. But I'd like to come back to that later. God's world, His people, His nations, His universe.

God busts into a world in turmoil where even the heavens have an ominous feel to them. He calls His people to step onto a path of peace, to turn around their priorities and attachments, and to seek justice for all that are disadvantged. He delivers and becomes incarnate in a humble and unexpected way which is so startling that it affects the movement of the stars--and brings foreign astrologers to investigate, to be in awe, to pay homage, and to worship this incarnate God made man. We still anticipate God's final coming to make things complete, but now we know that the mystery of the Upside-Down Kingdom is about to be revealed to the world, both near and far, through us. The church is called and in responding is being equipped to carry God's Kingdom to all the nations, all the people, and all the universe. To shine in God's glory.

In the second chapter of Matthew, in verses 1-23, we have an incredible contrast. A most majestic narrative of resplendent foreign kings coming to pay homage is coupled with an event of unspeakable horror--one of the most troubling stories in the Bible. Maji came to pay homage and worship the newborn Jesus, have some difficulty locating Him, inquire of at the palace, and trigger the mass slaughter of all of the male children two and under in and around the city of Bethleham. What can we make of this? We're told in Matthew 2:18 that Herod responded to this scene with uncontrolled rage, ordering all the boys two and under in and around Bethleham to be slaughtered. Majesty and honor laid alongside incredible violence, jealousy, and hatred with unspeakably devastating results.

But this story could simply be the stark reality of the time--tragedy and salvation may be interwoven--and maybe this is the nature of things to come--how Jesus' kingship will be. As old Simeon prophesided when he recognized Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem--"this Jesus will cause many to rise and fall." The great political minds of that day, and of every day after, did and will continue to fear and reject this king--and His birth and presence won't stop the violence. The great goodness of God's wisdom will always clash with the persistent evil of the world that surrounds it--good and evil will coexist and continue to define new boundaries. And Jesus and His followers will confront the powers of darkness over and over until His reign and its peace will rule in the end, despite the violence of the cross. He says in Luke 12:51-53, "Did you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, I came to bring division...justice, equality, humility will rule with peace and goodwill."

I need to share a little story--let's call it a lesson to the followers of Jesus. A man was going on an extended trip. He call three of his servants to him and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave $5,000--a huge sum a money in those days. To a second he gave $2,000--still quite a large sum. And to a third he gave $1,000. He tried to endow them so as not to create too much pressure on them--but to give them all a good challenge. Then he went away. The first servant responded quickly and doubled his master's trust quite efficiently. So did the second--they were both quite up to the expectation. But the servant who had been given the $1,000 endowment grumbled and said he didn't want thechallenge, for whatever reason. He dug a deep hole in the orchard and hid the money to keep it safe, he said, until the master returned, and he could give it back unused and unspoiled. He didn't really want any involvement and didn't really get it anyway. So he buried his endowment, buried his responsibility and tried to forget. After a long time the master returns and his first question to the three was, "So how did it go?" The first and second servants reported great success. They had doubled the gift and the beaming master offered them partnerships in some of his other enterprises that involved more responsibility and more opportunity for success. The third man returned the money and said he thought the master unfair to even have had expectations of him. He mumbled something about being afraid of being a disappointment to his master and about not really getting the picture anyway, about the instructions being a little vague so he just buried the gifts so he could give it back unused. Wow! Did the master lay a scolding on him for supporting the wickedness around him and for being lazy and irresponsible. He did nothing. He said things like, "What a terrible way to live--it's criminal to be so lazy, so useless, so senseless. He promptly fired him, probably for supporting the myth that there's no hope in trying anyway, so don't bother. Stay cool and aloof. Let opportunities pass you by--they don't matter as long as you have a clean shirt and a dry pair of socks and a few coins to jangle in your pocket. Better to look cool than keen, under the radar.

Now, Jesus does require us to be loose with possessions, as faithful stewards are. Careful of all the things we're entrusted with--and to trust Him to look after us when we're struggling or not quite getting it. He promises that he'll step in and help us to carefully plan what to do to get the maximum benefit for our talents--to make good choices with the endowments he trusts to us.

So what do Christians do to bring Him glory? One way that comes to mind is to work toward justice for anyone who's disadvantaged and take a giant step towards real peace on earth. Jesus message in the Sermon on the Mount introduces the Kingdom of God as His humble presence in the spiritual, material, social and political spheres of life as we know it in our everyday interactions. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once penned the following note: "If we could read the secret history of each of our enemies, we should find in each of their lives sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility towards them." Our job is to carry out a ministry of reconciliation, and make disciples of all we meet, and make people familiar with God's ways--that's the ideal Jesus sacrificed Himself for. For sure it's a great alternative to the brutishness of the ways of the society we live in.

I need to share a war story. War--probably one of my least favorite topics. I met a fellow one day sitting on a bench in the St. Vital Mall, passing the time while his wife and daughter were shopping. A lovely fellow, generous, gentle, a pastor in one of the Winnipeg churches. He'd fought in the Vietnam conflict so many years ago. A never ending war fought by several countries with no hope of resolution. He wasn't a Christian in those days, but because of a struggle he had with some events that happened there he sought out a Christian chaplain for help. Part of the chaplain's response to his dilemma was to acknowledge that to be a soldier was to involve oneself in an evil business. His challenge to my new friend was to wrestle with the evil and try to find the good that had been done. To find good in the evil essentially. On later reflection, and on becoming a Christian, his response was that he needed to decide which kingdom he belonged to, God's or one of the many others. We as the church often need to decide which kingdom we belong in. When the church functions according to the laws of God and His Kingdom and the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, it must seek first to discover God's way and other needs are filled as necessary, not the other way around. One needs to wonder why Christian brothers and sisters need to fight in the first place. that's a thought that always leaves me baffled--why people fight. We need to remind each other, and all who will listen, that the way of peace is not akin to the deployment of a fire truck, or even several, when the fire is already in progress. The way of the Kingdom is to live each day, maximizing our efforts to create good will in every event, and every activity, to change the course of the way things are. To make quarreling obsolete and something a few of the old timers remember as something they did in bygone days, but isn't done any more since God became the source of all the resouces we subscribe to.

That brings us back to the mystery in Ephesians 3:1-12. In his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul shares that a great secret has been revealed to him. Into his life had come the great revelation of the greatness of God. That secret was that the love and mercy and the grace of God were meant for all mankind, everbody, everywhere. God's love was for all and to be shared equally; violence and fear are not the last word. Equality, justice and peace are. We're all brothers and sisters, even those we don't feel we like to be with. And Paul saw himself as a man who'd been given a double privilege. He'd been given the privilege of becoming aware of the fact that it was God's will that all people should be gathered to Him in grace and love. And he'd been given the privilege of making that secret known to the church and of being the instrument whereby God's kindom was extended to the Gentiles. He was overwhelmed that this great privilege had been given to him as another responsibility--that he would be God's conduit for the revealing of another piece of His covenant. Conduit is the keyword.

An old pastor once shared a story with me. He shared a conversation he'd had with a brand new colleague, a new young pastor who had decided in elementary school that he would be a pastor when he grew up. The older man was interested in how the young man had come to this so early. The young fellow said he'd felt an overwhelming urge to prepare himself to be a pastor during a certain meditation he'd been attending in the school chapel service. The topic naturally moved to who had presented the meditation and the younger man said he couldn't recall who it was. He only remembered that the Lord had spoken to him that morning. That, they decided was a true meditation. That pastor had served by drawing attention not to himself but to the Lord. He'd gotten the young man to remember what was important. And that he was a conduit from God to that youngster. He had mastered the art of getting people to see God through him wtihout necessarily seeing him.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus points us to a culture of peacemaking rather than the one that permeates our culture, one that responds to everthing by trying to gain control of it. He didn't simply oppose evil and hatred. He constantly emphasized a transformation of our thoughts and beliefs that was needed to rescue us from the cycle. He maintained that to do a few nice things each week wasn't enough. Jesus spoke of a new life in His Kingdom, a life that required a commitment for God's righteousness to flow through us. For us to become a conduit that He could flow through to do the things he'd already endorsed and blessed as a routine way to do life.

Dietrich Bonnhoffer once said, "Jesus really is Lord over all and therefore the practices of peacemaking that Jesus taught for the church have their relevance for the total world." They are all a part of God's kingdom. God is God over the entire universe and is not only the God of our private lives or God over the Church. This means that His followers are called on to prod the political minds and systems and prod non-Christians who endorse the ways of violence and hatred to change their ways and adopt His ways unconditionally and also adopt the ways of reconciliation and love that He requires of all of His citizens. Simply because He ordains that it's the right thing to do. Like eating Quaker Oats, Wilford Brimley says it's the right thing to do and not one of man options.

To be the Christian Church takes an unqualified commitment to follow Jesus and to live a life that exemplifies a respectful love of our fellow human beings and the world we all live in. It has no room to celebrate our own private victories. Those actions might lead to inapprpriate and disrespectful behaviour toward those we might consider our competitors. When our lives are transformed by Jesus Chrst and we become the citizens of His Heavenly Kingdom our boundaries expand increbibly and our spirit of goodwill expands to include everyone.

I will close with an article that answers the question, from where did Jesus get his strength?

Christ is the light that shone into the darkness of first-century Palestine dominated by an oppressive Roman Empire that ruled with an iron grip and taxed the life-blood out of the Jewish peasants. Christ came as light to heal the sick, cast out life-destroying demons, and to proclaim the good news that God's kingdom had arrived. Therefore, people could receive the marvellous grace of God and repent. They could leave behind sinful and destructive beliefs and ways of living. They could embrace the joy of God, experience kingdom grace and forgiveness, and begin to live in the life-giving kingdom ways of peace, love, justice and righteousness now even in the midst of darkness.

Christmas is also about Jesus Christ entering the darkness of every other time and place (including ours), to bring light, healing, forgiveness, renewal and abundant life. Christmas is about Jesus coming into the dakness with God's promise that some day all of creation will be bathed and illuminated and renewed by the healing light of God, and that we can receive and walk in that light today.

Indeed, Christmas is good news, isn't it!
(By Dan Epp-Tiessen, Canadian Mennonite, December 21, 2009)

Let's bow in prayer:

Lord, You came to us as a child--a stranger who was vulnerable, and drew all on the margins to Yourself.
You reached out with healing power, and for that we praise You.
You came as one of the poor, to free all of the poor from poverty.
You came to offer all the freedom to live well and for this we offer you our heartfelt thanks.
You took onto Yourself the world's hostility and for that we offer you our adoration and unconditional love.
While we were weak and sinful and hostile to God's ways, You brought to us His offer of peace so that we might find new life.
And for this we offer You our humble sacrifice of praise. Amen

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